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Horace  Bushnell,  The  Citizen. 


By  EDWIN  D.  MEAD. 


BOSTON,    1900. 


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HORACE    BUSHNELL,   THE    CITIZEN. 

By  Edwin  D.  Mead. 


WHEN  the  Twentieth  Century 
Club  of  Boston  was  org-anized, 
half  a  dozen  years  ago,  the  first 
general  meeting  of  the  club  was  a 
memorial  to  Phillips  Brooks,  who  had 
been  interested  in  the  idea  of  such  a 
club  in  Boston  and  had  purposed  to 
become  a  member.  At  this  memorial 
meeting  there  were  addresses  by  Ed- 
ward Everett  Hale  and  Dr.  Donald, 
Brooks's  successor  as  rector  of  Trin- 
ity Church.  In  the  course  of  his  ad- 
dress, which  was  a  fine  analysis  of 
Brooks's  genius  and  influence,  Dr. 
Donald  observed  that  that  influence 
did  not  lie  in  the  contribution  of  any- 
thing distinctly  original  to  American 
religious  thought ;  Phillips  Brooks's 
theology,  he  said,  was  "simply  the 
theology  of  Bushnell." 

This  is  substantially  the  truth ;  and 
it  could  be  said  of  great  numbers  of 
the  most  thoughtful  and  influential  men 
in  the  American  pulpit  to-day.  In  the 
religious  turmoil  and  confusion  of  a 
generation  ago,  Bushnell  was  a  great 
light  and  a  positive  guide,  mediating 
to  many  minds  a  rational  theology 
and  a  noble  and  satisfying  method. 
Washington  Gladden  undoubtedly 
spoke  for  hundreds  when  he  recently 
•wrote:  "I  could  not  have  remained  in 
the  ministry,  an  honest  man,  if  it  had 
not  been  for  him.  The  time  came, 
long  before  I  saw  him,  when  the  legal 
or  forensic  theories  of  the  Atonement 
were  not  true  for  me ;  if  I  had  not 
found  his  'God  in  Christ'  and  'Christ 
in  Theology,'  I  .must  have  stopped 
preaching.  Dr.  Bushnell  gave  me  a 
moral  theology,  and  helped  me 'to  be- 
lieve in  the  justice  of  God.  If  I  have 
had  any  gospel  to  preach  during  the 
last  thirty-five  years,  it  is  because  he 
led  me  into  the  light  and  joy  of  it." 
Horace  Bushnell  was  certainly  the 


most  original  and  influential  theo- 
logian in  New  England  in  this  last 
half  of  the  nineteenth  century,  save 
Theodore  Parker  alone.  It  is  inter- 
esting to  know  that  the  two  great 
thinkers  knew  each  other  personally. 
In  1843 — in  which  year  also  it  is 
pleasant  to  read  that  Bushnell  walked 
arm  in  arm  with  George  Ripley  of 
Brook  Farm  to  hear  Webster's 
Bunker  Hill  oration — he  spent  an 
evening  with  Theodore  Parker,  when 
they  "went  over  the  whole  ground  of 
theology  together" ;  and  Dr.  Hunger, 
who  mentions  the  fact  in  his  new 
biograph}'-  of  Bushnell,  observes  that 
it  is  safe  to  say  that  neither  appealed 
to  the  "standards."  Greatly  as  the 
two  men  dififered  in  intellectual  na- 
ture, manner,  emphasis  and  conclu- 
sions, their  community  was  far  more 
impressive  and  important ;  they  were 
fellow-workers  in  liberating  New 
England  religion  from  the  tyranny  of 
tradition  and  authority,  and  in  help- 
ing it  to  the  method  of  reason  and 
nature.  Bushnell,  as  Dr.  Hunger 
iruly  says,  "questioned  the  prevailing 
orthodoxy  at  all  points, — inspiration, 
regeneration,  trinity,  atonement, 
miracles."  The  character  of  his  ap- 
jieal  to  a  higher  court  than  that  of  any 
current  definitions  is  well  illustrated 
by  the  following  passage  from  one  of 
his  controversial  treatises:  "I  do 
peremptorily  refuse  to  justify  myself, 
as  regards  this  matter  of  trinity,  be- 
fore any  New  England  standard.  We 
have  no  standard  better  than  the  re- 
siduary tritheistic  compost,  such  as 
may  be  left  us  after  we  have  cast  away 
that  which  alone  made  the  old  historic 
doctrine  of  trinity  possible.  I  know 
not  whether  you  design  to  make  a 
standard  for  me  of  this  decadent  and 
dilapidated  orthodoxy  of  ours:  but  if 


Keiniiited  fiom  llie  New  I'A'ci.and  M.vgazink,  December,  1899,  and  January,  1900. 

312671 


^'URHCB.  BUSH  NELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


you  do,  then  I  appeal  to  Cresar;  I 
even  undertake  to  arrais^^n  your  stand- 
ard itself  before  the  tril)unal   of  his- 

\\^A  ■  'Christian  -Gniture,"  "The  Vica- 
rious Sacrifice,"  "God  in  Christ," 
'  "Christ  and  his  Salvation," — each  of 
these  works  bore  in  it  a  revolution  for 
American  relif^ious  thouo^ht  and  life. 
Epoch-making:  above  all  was  the 
work  on  "Nature  and  the  Supernatu- 
ral." Some  chapters  of  this  g-reat 
work  differ  from  others  in  value,  and 
much  of  it  has  been  left  behind,  so  far 
as  concerns  much  more  than  detail, 
by  the  advancincf  thouQ-ht  of  the  last 
o-eneration  ;  but  it  is  and  will  remain  a 
monument  to  Bushnell's  comprehen- 
sive and  philosophic  mind ;  and  ap- 
pearini";  as  it  did  in  the  early  davs  of 
the  controversies  over  Darwinism, 
evolution  and  German  criticism.,  it 
performed  a  unique  service  in  what 
has  become  the  most  important  realm 
of  theolojjy.  Bushnell,  as  Dr.  Mun- 
,c:er  well  defines  it,  "did  not  deny  a 
certain  antithesis  between  nature  and 
tlie  supernatural ;  but  he  so  defined 
the  latter  that  the  two  could  be  em- 
braced in  the  one  categ-ory  of  nature 
when  viewed  as  the  ascertained  order 
of  God  in  creation.  The  supernatural 
is  simply  the  realm  of  freedom,  and  it 
is  as  natural  as  the  physical  realm  of 
necessity.  Thus  he  not  only  got  rid 
of  the  traditional  antinomy  between 
them,  but  led  the  way  into  that  con- 
ception of  the  relation  of  God  to  his 
world  which  more  and  more  is  taking- 
possession  of  modern  thought."  The 
power  of  Bushnell  was  not  so  much 
in  the  new  doctrines  which  he  taught, 
although  he  was  a  prolific,  radical  and 
sweeping  teacher  of  new  doctrines, 
as  in  the  new  and  inspiring  spirit, 
the  spirit  of  nature  and  of  freedom, 
which  he  brought  to  every  question, 
"lie  was,"  as  Dr.  Hunger  says,  "the 
first  theologian  in  New  England  to 
admit  fully  into  his  thought  the  mod- 
ern sense  of  nature,  as  it  is  found  in 
the  literature  of  the  century,  and  no- 
tably in  Wordsworth  and  Coleridge. 
The   secret  of  this   movement-  was   a 


spiritual  interpretation  of  nature.  It 
was  a  step  in  the  evolution  of  human 
thought ;  and  appearing  first  in  litera- 
ture, its  natural  point  of  entrance,  it 
was  sure  to  reach  all  forms  of  thought, 
as  in   time  it  will  reach  all  forms  of 

social   life." 

* 

We  have  spoken  of  Bushnell  as  one 
of  the  two  most  original  and  influen- 
tial New  England  theologians  in  re- 
cent time.  A  certain  critic  has  said 
that  "the  designation  of  a  theologian 
cannot,  in  any  technical  sense  at  all 
events,  be  applied  to  him."  Dr.  Mun- 
ger,  noticing  the  word,  says,  "What- 
ever truth  there  may  be  in  this  remark 
lies  in  the  fact  that  he  was  preemi- 
nently a  preacher,  and  a  preacher  is 
seldom  a  technical  theologian."  It 
would  certainly  be  interesting  to 
know  what  a  theologian  is,  if  the 
great  works  of  Bushnell  which  we 
have  enumerated  are  not  the  works 
of  a  theologian.  It  is  also  interesting 
to  remember  that  few  "technical 
theologians"  have  had  a  tithe  of  the 
influence  upon  religious  and  distinctly 
theological  thought  in  our  time  that 
has  been  exerted  by  such  minds  as 
Emerson  and  Browning  and  Tenny- 
son. It  is  true,  however,  as  Dr.  Mun- 
ger  says,  that  Bushnell  was  preemi- 
nently a  preacher,  if  not  the  "ablest 
preacher  of  his  day,"  certainly  one  of 
the  very  ablest,  and  that  in  hiiri  "the 
preacher  absorbed  the  theologian  and 
supplanted  his  methods."  Professor 
George  Adam  Smith  has  said  that 
Bushnell  is  the  preacher's  preacher, 
as  Spenser  is  the  poet's  poet.  His 
early  sermon  on  "Every  Man's  Life  a 
Plan  of  God"  has  been  spoken  of  by 
one  enthusiast  as  "one  of  the  three 
greatest  sermons'  ever  preached,"  the 
other  two  named  by  this  classifier 
being  Canon  Mozley's  on  "The  Re- 
versal of  Human  Judgments"  and 
Phillips  Brooks's  "Gold  and  the 
Calf."  Dr.  ]\Iunger's  judgment  is: 
"No  sermons  have  a  better  claim  to 
be  ranked  in  'the  literature  of  power.' 
and  it  mav  be  expected  that  thev  will 


HORACE   BUSHNELL,    THE   CITIZEN. 


live  on  in  the  world  of  literature  along 
with  those  of  Bishop  Butler,  Mozley 
and  Newman,  with  hardly  less  weight 
of  matter,  and  with  even  deeper  in- 
sight into  the  ways  of  the  spirit,  both 
of  God  and  man.  They  are  univer- 
sal ;  and  yet  they  especially  reflect  the 
New  England  mind  as  a  combination 
of  idealitv,  conscience  and  practical- 
ity." 


M^e  wish  to  consider  Bushnell  here 
as  a  representative  of  the  New  Eng- 
land mind,  as  one  of  its  greatest  and 
truest  representatives  in  tliis  half  cen- 
tury, and  that  upon  the  side  not  the- 
ological or  distinctly  religious.  We 
are  all  rejoicing  in  the  new  Life  of 
Bushnell  which  has  just  been  given 
us  by  Dr.  Hunger.  There  is  no 
other  man  so  well  qualified  as  he  to 
write  such  a  book,  not  only  by  reason 
of  his  unusual  knowledge  of  Bush- 
nell's  work  and  the  religious  condi- 
tions under  which  his  life  was  lived, 
but  much  more  by  reason  of  peculiar 
intellectual  and  spiritual  aftanity.  The 
work  is  a  welcome  and  necessary 
complement  to  the  "Life  and  Letters 
of  Horace  Bushnell"  prepared  by  his 
daughters  not  many  years  after  his 
death.  Of  that  admirable  biography 
Dr.  Hunger  truly  says:  "Nothing 
more  in  the  way  of  personal  history 
could  be  desired ;  but  it  made  no  at- 
tempt to  deal  with  his  theological 
treatises  in  a  critical  and  thorough 
way."  His  own  book  "owes  its  ex- 
istence to  the  fact  that  no  full  and 
connected  account  of  Dr.  Bushnell's 
work  as  a  theologian  has  yet  been 
made."  His  book  is  properly  enti- 
tled "Horace  Bushnell.  Preacher  and 
Theologian."  The  earlier  biography 
might  properly  have  been  entitled 
"Horace  Bushnell,  the  Han."  A 
third  book  yet  remains  to  be  written, 
to  accomplish  the  adequate  presenta- 
tion of  Dr.  Bushnell's  broad  interests 
and  far-reaching  influence ;  and  that 
book  should  be  entitled  "Horace 
Bushnell,  the  Citizen."  It  is  true 
that  Bushnell  the  man  and  Bushnell 


the  preacher  could  not  be  treated 
without  attention  to  Bushnell  the 
citizen.  The  vital  and  varied  activ- 
ity of  Dr.  Bushnell  in  social  and 
civic  things  constantly  appears  in  the 
early  biography  by  his  daughters, 
and  is  emphasized  by  Dr.  Parker  in 
his  supplementary  chapter  to  that 
work.  Dr.  Hunger  also  does  not  fail 
to  glance  at  it  again  and  again ;  but 
the  brief  chapter,  "Essays  and  Ad- 
dresses," devoted  expressly  to  what 
may  be  called  Bushnell's  secular 
work,  is  quite  inadequate,  if  the  vol- 
ume were  to  be  viewed  as  a  general 
biography  and  not  primarily  and  es- 
sentially as  an  account  of  Dr.  Bush- 
nell's work  as  a  theologian. 

A  man  could  not  indeed  be  so  great 
a  theologian  as  Dr.  Bushnell  was 
without  being  much  more  than  a 
theologian.  One  who  was  himself 
an  eminent  theologian  has  well  said 
that  "a  theologian  must  needs  have 
h'eard  the  voice  of  his  own  genera- 
tion," and  that  "theology  stagnates 
when  it  is  cut  ofif  from  present  life." 
Dr.  Bushnell  himself,  speaking  of  the 
true  training  and  scholarship  for  the 
preacher,  says  that  such  scholarship 
"needs  to  be  universal;  to  be  out  in 
God's  universe ;  that  is,  to  see  and 
study  and  know  everything,  books 
and  men  and  the  whole  work  of  God, 
from  the  stars  downward ;  to  have  a 
sharp  observation  of  war  and  peace 
and  trade ;  of  animals  and  trees  and 
atoms ;  of  the  weather  and  the  eva- 
nescent smells  of  the  creations  ;  to  have 
bored  into  society  in  all  its  grades  and 
meanings,  its  manners,  passions, 
prejudices  and  times ;  so  that,  as  the 
study  goes  on,  the  soul  will  be  getting 
full  of  laws,  images,  analogies  and 
facts,  and  drawing  out  all  subtlest 
threads  of  import  to  be  its  interpreters 
when  the  preaching  work  requires. 
Of  what  use  is  it  to  know  the  German, 
when  we  do  not  know  the  human, — 
or  Hebrew  points,  when  we  do  not 
know  at  all  the  points  of  our  wonder- 
fully punctuated  humanity?"  But 
one  might  say  all  this  with  fair  fidelitv 
of  many  a  preacher,  and  yet  not  de- 


HORACE   BUSHNRLL,    TllJi  CfTIZEN. 


scribe  Dr.  Bushnell  in  his  varied  ca- 
pacities   and    creativeness.     Dr.    Bar- 
tol,   who  was   Bushnell's  dear  friend 
for  so  many  years,  and  whose  corre- 
spondence with  Bushnell  fills  some  of 
the    most    intcrestinp^    pages    of    Dr. 
Hunger's  book,  wrote  to  Mrs.  Bush- 
nell after  his  death:  "He  had  it  in  him 
to  be  an  artist,  architect,  road-builder 
and  city-l)uilder,  as  well  as  scholar ; 
and  well  is  your  Hartford  park  called 
by   his   name."     Bishop    Clark,    who 
was  the  rector  of  a  church  in  Hartford 
for   several    years    during   Bushnell's 
pastorate,    wrote    of    the    things    of 
which    one    might    have    heard    him 
chatting   in    the    bookstore,    with    all 
sorts    of   people, — "the    news    of   the 
day,   the   doings   of  public   men,   the 
affairs  of  the  city,  in  which  he  took 
especial  interest,  politics,  farming,  me- 
chanics, inventions,  books."     "Those 
who  know  him  only  by  his  theological 
writings,"   said   Bishop   Clark,   "have 
no    conception    of   the    range    of    his 
mind  and  the  variety  of  subjects  that 
he  had  investigated.     He  was  skilled 
in  mechanics,  and  has  given  the  world 
some    inventions    of    his    own.     The 
house    in    which    I    once    lived    was 
warmed   by  a   furnace  which  he  de- 
vised, when  such  domestic  improve- 
ments were  comparatively  new.     He 
could  plan  a  house  or  lay  out  a  park 
or  drain  a  city  better  than  many  of  our 
experts.     He  was  as  much  at  home  in 
talking  with  the  rough  guides  of  the 
Adirondacks  as  he  was  in  discussing 
metaphysics  with  theologians  in  coun- 
cil.    If  he  had  been  a  medical  man, 
he  would  have  struck  at  the  roots  of 
disease    and    discovered    remedies    as 
yet  unknown.      If  he  had  gone  into 
civil  life,  he  would  have  taught  our 
public  men  some  lessons  in  political 
economy  which  they  greatly  need  to 
know."    Dr.  Munger,  speaking  espe- 
cially   of    Bushnell's    political    es.=ays, 
says     "Many   of  these   essays   reveal 
Bushnell  as  a  publicist  of  the  first  or- 
der.     No    man    of    his    day    handled 
those  questions  of  state  that  involved 
the   moral    sense   of  the   people   with 
such  breadth  of  view  and  such  fidelity. 


both  to  the  nation  and  to  conscience, 
as  arc  displayed  in  many  a  sermon 
and  address  from  1837  to  the  very  end 
of  his  life." 


With  a  political  outlook  as  broad 
always  as  the  nation  and  the  world. 
Dr.  Bushnell's  was  emphatically  a 
New  England  nature  and  a  New 
England  mind.  He  found  himself  in 
the  right  place  when  he  welled  up  to 
consciousness  in  the  New  England 
country,  when  he  went  for  his  book 
learning  to  Yale  College,  and  when  as 
the  place  for  his  life-work  he  took  a 
Hartford  pulpit. 

His  youth  was  the  best  kind  of  a 
New  England  youth,  which  is  the  best 
youth  in  the  world,  a  genuine  "age  of 
homespun."  He  was  born  in  pre- 
cisely that  part  of  Connecticut  in 
which  one  would  choose  to  be  born 
if  he  is  to  be  born  in  Connecticut,  the 
neighborhood  of  Litchfield,  with  its 
beautiful  landscapes  and  its  strong 
traditions.  In  one  place  and  another 
in  this  historic  region  he  lived  until 
he  was  twenty-one  years  of  age,  work- 
ing on  the  farm  and  supplementing 
this  work  by  wool-carding  and  cloth- 
dressing,  after  the  manner  of  tlie  tmie. 
"There  was  always  something  for  the 
smallest  to  do, — errands  to  run,  ber- 
ries to  pick,  weeds  to  pull,  earnings 
all  for  the  common  property,  in  wnich 
he  thus  begins  to  be  a  stockholder." 
"There  is  nothing  in  those  early 
days,"  he  tells  us  himself,  "that  I  re- 
member with  more  zest  than  that  I 
did  the  full  work  of  a  man  for  at  least 
five  years  before  the  manly  age, — this, 
too,  under  no  eight-hour  law  of  pro- 
tective delicacy,  but  holding  fast  the 
astronomic  ordinance  in  a  service  of 
from  thirteen  to  fourteen  hours."  It 
was  a  life  well  calculated  to  make  a 
young  man  self-reliant,  practical  and 
"shifty" ;  and  the  hills  and  valleys, 
lakes  and  brooks,  forests  and  fields, 
amid  which  his  life  was  lived,  were 
the  best  school  for  the  lover  of  nature 
that  he  was.  "The  homestead  was  on 
the  slope  of  a  broad-backed  hill  that 


HORACE  BUSHNELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


stretched  away  for  a  mile  to  the  sum- 
mit, on  which  stood  the  only  church 
in  the  town.  The  house  was  one  of 
those  which  marked  the  best  period 
of  rural  architecture  in  New  England, 
— roomy,  cheerful  and  with  an  inde- 
finable air  of  dignity,  simplicity  and 
comfort, — character,  in  brief,  in  the 
terms  of  architecture." 

Through  all  was  the  atmosphere  of 
a  strong  and  beautiful  religion,  a  re- 
ligion far  more  catholic  and  genial 
than  that  common  in  many  Connecti- 
cut households  at  the  beginning  of  the 
century.  The  father  had  imbibed 
Arminian  views,  the  mother  had  been 
reared  in  the  Episcopal  Church ;  and 
when  both  became  members  of  the 
Congregational  Church,  it  was  with 
this  background  and  with  the  strict 
Calvinism  of  the  time  and  place  tem- 
pered in  them  by  these  influences. 
There  was  music  and  love  in  that 
Litchfield  county  home,  there  was 
hard  work  and  honest  play,  there  was 
truth, — "I  do  not  remember  ever 
hearing  any  one  of  the  children  ac- 
cused of  untruth," — there  wdiS  a  noble 
mother  with  ambitions  for  a  liberal 
education  and  life  more  abundant  for 
the  children.  It  was  a  household 
which,  as  the  world  counts,  belonged 
to  a  higher  class  than  that  of  Burns's 
cotter;  yet  as  we  read  of  its  life  and 
spirit,  it  is  the  words  of  Burns  that 
well  up  to  speak  for  the  feeling  of  our 
hearts.  From  scenes  like  this,  we 
feel,  New  England's  grandeur 
springs ! 


If  there  be  a  prose  counterpart  to 
"The  Cotter's  Saturday  Night"  and 
"Snow  Bound,"  it  is  "The  Age  of 
Homespun."  This  great  address, 
given  as  a  sermon  at  the  centennial 
celebration  of  Litchfield  county  in 
185 1,  and  now  one  of  our  New  Eng- 
land classics,  Dr.  IMunger  believes 
will  "probablv  be  longer  remembered 
and  oftener  quoted  than  any  other 
writing  of  Bushnell.  because  it  is  so 
true  a  picture  of  rural  New  England 


life  in  the  early  part  of  the  century.* 
It  is  an  outburst  of  grateful  recollec- 
tion of  his  early  life, — pathetic,  hu- 
morous, photographic  in  its  accu- 
racy, keen  in  its  analysis,  reverent  and 
noble  in  its  tone,  revealing  not  more 
the  period  it  describes  than  the  man 
himself."  There  is  not  in  our  New 
England  literature  any  other  work 
which  shows  with  such  true  sympa- 
thy and  understanding,  such  sturdi- 
ness  and  tenderness  and  insight,  the 
character  of  the  people  of  the  old  New 
England  country  and  the  spirit  which 
has  created  what  is  best  and  most  en- 
durin,^  in  New  England  and  in  the 
nation.  It  treats  of  the  day  before 
the  factory  day,  the  day  when  the 
cloth  upon  men's  backs  was  made 
not  by  water  and  steam  power,  but 
by  "mother  and  daughter  power."  In 
this  fine  passage  upon  the  village 
graveyard,  he  gives  the  eloquent  and 
didactic  census  of  the  real  forces 
which  made   New  England: 

'"Here  lie  the  sturdy  kings  of  Homespun, 
who  climbed  amon.sr  these  hills,  with  their 
axes,  to  cut  away  room  for  their  cabins  and 
for  family  prayers,  and  so  for  the  good  fu- 
ture to  come.  Here  lie  their  sons,  who  fod- 
dered their  cattle  on  the  snows  and  built 
stone  fence,  while  the  corn  was  sprouting 
in  the  hills,  getting  ready  in  that  way  to 
send  a  boy  or  two  to  college.  Here  lie  the 
good  housewives,  that  made  coats  every 
year,  like  Hannah,  for  their  children's 
bodies,  and  lined  their  memory  with  cate- 
chism; here  the  millers  that  took  honest 
toll  of  the  rye;  the  smiths  and  coopers  that 
superintended  two  hands  and  gotaliltle rev- 
enue of  honest  bread  and  schooling  from 
their  joint  stock  of  two-handed  investment; 
here  the  district  committees  and  school- 
mistresses, society  founders  and  church 
deacons,  and  withal  a  great  many  sensible, 
wise-headed  men  who  read  the  weekly 
newspaper,  loved  George  Washington  and 
their  country,  and  l.ad  never  a  thought  of 
going  to  the  General  Assembly.  Who  they 
are,  by  name,  we  cannot  tell — no  matter 
who  they  are — we  should  be  none  the  wiser 
if  we  could  name  them,  they  themselves 
none  the  more  honorable." 

W^e  do  not  know  of  any  other 
tribute  equal  to  that  here  to  the  home 
life   in   the   New   England   country  a 

*  "  The  Age  of  Homespun  "  was  reprinted  in  the  New 
England  M.^gazine  for  January,  1898. 


HORACE   BUSH  NELL,    THE  CHI  ZEN. 


century  ago, — a  life  which  continued 
to  a  far  later  time,  and  which  in  its 
main  and  noblest  features  is,  thank 
God,  not  yet  extinct  upon  our  hills 
and  in  a  hundred  little  towns.  We  do 
not  know  of  any  more  memorable 
tribute  to  the  district  school, — "those 
little  primitive  universities  of  home- 
spun, where  your  mind  was  born." 
We  do  not  know  of  any  other  tribute 
so  impressive  to  the  stern  old  New 
England  religion,  nor  any  other  pic- 
ture so  touching  or  so  just  of  the  Sab- 
bath assemblage  and  the  men  of  the 
New  England  churches. 

"True,  there  was  a  rigor  in  their  piety,  a 
want  of  gentle  feeling:  their  Christian 
graces  were  cast-iron  shapes,  answering 
with  a  hard  metalHc  ring.  But  they  stood 
the  rough  wear  of  life  none  the  less  durably 
for  the  excessive  hardness  of  their  temper- 
ament, kept  their  famiHes  and  communities 
none  the  less  truly,  though  it  may  be  less 
benignl)',  under  the  s-ense  of  God  and  re- 
ligion. If  we  find  something  to  modify  or 
soften  in  their  over-rigid  notions  of  Chris- 
tian living,  it  is  yet  something  to  know  that 
what  we  are  they  have  made  us,  and  that 
when  we  have  done  better  for  the  ages  that 
come  after  us,  we  shall  have  a  more  certain 
right  to  blame  their  austerities." 

Alost  noteworthy  and  most  noble  is 
his  fine  defence  of  these  strong  men 
and  women  of  the  New  England 
country,  forced  as  they  were  to  their 
close  economies,  from  the  charge  of 
meanness,  which  has  so  often  and  so 
carel  ssly  been  made  against  them.  It 
is  a  defence  throbbing  with  tender 
reverence  for  those  whom  his  own  life 
had  touched  so  intimately. 

"When  tlie  hard,  wiry-looking  patriarch 
of  homespun,  for  example,  sets  off  for 
Hartford,  or  Bridgeport,  to  exchange  tl>e 
little  surplus  of  his  year's  production, 
carrying  his  provision  with  him  and  the 
fodder  of  his  team,  and  taking  his  boy 
along  to  show  him  the  great  world,  you 
may  laugh  at  the  simplicity,  or  pity,  if  you 
will,  the  sordid  look  of  the  picture;  but, 
five  or  ten  years  hence,  this  boy  will  prob- 
ably enough  be  found  in  college,  digging 
out  the  cent's  worths  of  his  father's  money 
in  hard  study;  and  some  twenty  years  later 
he  will  be  rcturninir  in  his  honors,  as  the 
celebrated  judge,  or  governor,  or  senator 
and  public  orator,  from  some  one  of  the 


great  states  of  the  republic,  to  bless  the 
sight  once  more  of  that  venerated  pair  who 
sha])ed  his  beginnings  and  planted  the 
small  seed  of  his  future  success.  Small 
seeds,  you  may  have  thought,  of  meanness; 
but  now  they  have  grown  up  and  blos- 
somed into  a  large-minded  life,  a  generous 
public  devotion,  and  a  free  benevolence  to 
mankind," 

We  have  quoted  thus  largely  from 
this  noble  address,  because  it  reveals 
like  nothing  else  the  background  and 
the  shaping  forces  of  this  great  New 
England  life,  and  because  it  strikes 
again  and  again  the  real  kev-note  of 
his  gospel  of  citizenship.  That  gos- 
pel was  a  gospel  of  virtue,  of  morality, 
of  self-reliance  and  of  work,  of  sim- 
plicity, high-mindedness.  fraternity 
and  public  spirit,  of  a  politics  com- 
manded and  surcharged  with  religion, 
a  new  Puritanism,  There  was  no  one 
of  his  political  addresses  in  which  the 
closing  words  of  "The  Age  of  Home- 
spun" would  not  somewhere  have 
found  proper  place. 

''Your  condition  will  hereafter  be  soft- 
ened, and  your  comforts  multiplied.  Let 
your  culture  be  as  much  advanced.  But 
let  no  delicate  spirit  that  despises  work 
grow  up  in  your  sons  and  daughters. 
Make  these  rocky  hills  smooth  their  faces 
and  smile  under  your  industry.  Let'  no 
absurd  ambition  tempt  you  to  imitate  the 
manners  of  the  great  world  of  fashion,  and 
rob  you  thus  of  the  respect  and  dignity 
that  pertain  to  manners  properly  your  own. 
Maintain,  above  all,  j'our  religious  exact- 
ness. Think  what  is  true,  and  then  respect 
yourselves  in  living  exactly  what  you 
think.  Fear  God  and  keep  his  command- 
ments, as  your  godly  fathers  and  mothers 
did  before  you,  and  found  to  be  the  begin- 
ning of  wisdom." 


As  Bushnell  was  a  warm  lover  of 
his  own  Litchfield  county,  so  was  he 
a  supremely  loyal  son  of  his  own  state ; 
and  as  "The  Age  of  Homespun"  is 
the  most  noteworthy  literary  tribute 
to  the  life  and  people  of  his  boyhood 
home,  so  is  his  "Historical  Estimate" 
of  Connecticut,  an  address  delivered 
before  the  legislature  of  the  state,  it 
may  be  observed,  the  same  summer 
that  the  sermon  was  given  at  Litch- 
field,    the     most     significant     review 


HORACE   BUSHNELL,     THE   CITIZEN 


which  has  ever  been  written  of  the 
noteworthy  and  noble  things  for 
which  Connecticut  has  stood.  In  all 
the  circles  of  his  patriotism,  Bush- 
nell's  heart  beat  strongly.  He  loved 
his  native  place,  he  loved  his  city  of 
Hartford,  he  loved  Connecticut,  he 
loved  America,  and  he  loved  the 
world ;  and  his  patriotism  in  each  nar- 
rower circle  was  food  and  inspiration 
for  that  in  the  wider  and  the  wider 
still.  "The  man  who  does  not  love 
and  honor  the  state  in  which  he  and 
his  children  are  born  has  no  heart  in 
his  bosom,"  he  says  at  the  beginning 
of  his  "Historical  Estimate ;"  and  this 
eloquent  survey  of  the  history  of  Con- 
necticut is  indeed  the  tribute  of  a 
lover.  It  is  the  tribute  of  the  most 
just  and  intelligent  lover.  Nothing 
perhaps  reveals  more  trulv  Bushnell's 
splendid  scholarship ;  and  after  we 
have  followed  him  in  his  careful  sur- 
vey of  the  services  of  Hooker,  Daven- 
port, the  younger  Winthrop  and  the 
other  founders  of  Connecticut,  and 
the  men  of  the  period  of  the  Revolu- 
tion and  the  Constitutional  Conven- 
tion, we  are  not  disposed  in  any  way 
to  temper  his  enthusiastic  tributes. 
His  study  of  the  strong  local  inde- 
pendence of  the  little  Connecticut 
towns  has  a  peculiar  value.  We  dis- 
cussed in  these  pages  some  months 
ago  the  splendid  opportunities  which 
our  American  history  offers  to  the 
American  painter;  and  we  spoke  of 
several  noteworthy  hints  and  outlines 
of  particular  subjects  given  by  various 
imaginative  writers.  Bushnell  gives 
such  a  hint  in  his  "Historical  Esti- 
mate," and  it  is  such  a  striking  pic- 
ture which  he  suggests  that  we  must 
quote  the  passage.  It  is  where  he 
pictures  the  return  of  Mason  with  his 
little  Puritan  legion  to  Hartford,  after 
the  Pequot  war,  when  the  colony 
made  him  its  general-in-chief,  and 
Hooker,  in  presence  of  the  people, 
delivered  him  his  commission. 

"Here  is  a  scene  for  the  painter  of  some 
future  day — I  see  it  even  now  before  me. 
Tn  the  distance  and  behind  the  huts  of 
Hartford   waves   the   signal   flag  by   which 


the  town  watch  is  to  give  notice  of  enemies. 
In  the  foreground  stands  the  tall,  swart 
form  of  the  soldier  in  his  armor;  and  be- 
fore him,  in  sacred,  apostolic  majesty,  the 
manly  Hooker.  Haynes  and  Hopkins, 
with '  the  legislature  and  the  hardy,  toil- 
worn  settlers  and  their  wives  and  daugh- 
ters, are  gathered  round  them  in  close 
order,  gazing  with  moistened  eyes  at  the 
hand  which  lifts  the  open  commission  to 
God,  and  listening  to  the  fervent  prayer 
that  the  God  of  Israel  will  endue  his  ser- 
vant, as  heretofore,  with  courage  and 
counsel  to  lead  them  in  the  days  of  their 
future  peril.  True  there  is  nothing  classic 
in  this  scene;  this  is  no  crown  bestowed 
at  the  Olympic  games,  or  at  a  Roman  tri- 
umph; and  yet  there  is  a  severe,  primitive 
sublimity  in  the  picture,  that  will  some- 
time be  invested  with  feelings  of  the  deep- 
est re\erence." 

The  Massachusetts  man  may  feel 
that  the  space  which  Bushnell  gives 
to  arguing  that  Putnam  and  not  Pres- 
cott  was  the  commander  at  Bunker 
Hill  is  disproportionate;  but  he  does 
not  grudge  any  word  of  praise  for 
Putnam  any  more  than  he  grudges 
the  warm  words  to  Wooster.  Wolcott, 
Ledyard  and  Brother  Jonathan.  It 
is  not  with  Connecticut  statesmen  and 
warriors  only  that  this  "Historical  Es- 
timate" concerns  itself;  the  Connecti- 
cut clergy  and  poets,  inventors  and 
educators,  have  due  honor, — and  the 
names  of  these  are  many  and  great. 
The  occasion  of  the  address  was  the 
inauguration  of  the  State  Normal 
School  at  New  Britain,  and  therefore, 
as  was  fitting,  the  educational  institu- 
tions of  Connecticut,  from  Yale  Col- 
lege to  the  district  schools  of  "a  little 
obscure  parish  in  Litchfield  county," 
whose  remarkable  contributions  to 
the  intellectual  hfe  of  the  nation  he 
enumerated  with  joy  and  pride,  were 
given  special  prominence.  Connecti- 
cut, he  said,  "is  to  find  her  first  and 
noblest  interest,  apart  from  religion, 
in  the  full  and  perfect  education  of  her 
sons  and  daughters."  No  other  New 
England  state  can  point  to  such  a  his- 
torical estimate  as  Dr.  Bushnell  has 
made  of  Connecticut  in  this  glowing 
essay ;  and  the  history  as  it  rises  to 
view  under  his  loving  pen  is  seen  to 
be  what  he  pronounces  it, — "a  history 


8 


HORACE  BUSHNELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


of  practical  greatness  and  true  honor ; 
illustrious  in  its  beginning;  serious 
and  thoughtful  in  its  progress ;  dis- 
pensing intelligence,  without  the  re- 
wards of  fame;  heroic  for  the  right, 
instigated  by  no  hope  of  applause ; 
independent,  as  not  knowing  how  to 
be  otherwise ;  adorned  with  names  of 
wisdom  and  greatness,  fit  to  be  re- 
vered as  long  as  true  excellence  may 
have  a  place  in  the  reverence  of  man- 
kind." 

* 
*     * 

It  was  most  fitting  that  Connecti- 
cut should  call  Dr.  Bushnell  to  give 
the  address  before  her  legislature 
upon  the  occasion  of  the  opening  of 
her  State  Normal  School.  His  ser- 
vices for  the  cause  of  education  alto- 
gether were  very  great.  It  would  be 
interesting  to  dwell  upon  his  relations 
to  Yale  College,  from  his  student  days 
there  to  the  day  of  his  death.  It  was 
before  the  alumni  of  Yale  College  that 
he  delivered,  in  1843,  his  oration  upon 
"The  Growth  of  Law,"  to  which  we 
shall  presently  refer  in  speaking  of  his 
conspicuous  services  for  the  cause  of 
internationalism  and  the  organization 
of  the  world.  It  was  before  the 
alumni  of  Yale  College  that  he  de- 
livered, in  1865,  at  the  commemora- 
tive celebration  in  honor  of  those  of 
the  alunmi  who  fell  in  the  war  of  the 
rebellion  his  great  oration  upon  "Our 
Obligations  to  the  Dead."  He  led 
his  class  at  Yale,  we  read,  in  athletic 
sports,  as  well  as  on  the  intellectual 
side ;  and  he  left  in  the  college  an  en- 
during monument  in  the  Beethoven 
Society,  which  he  organized  in  order 
to  lift  the  standard  of  the  music  in  the 
chapel.  Bushnell,  some  one  has  writ- 
ten, was  "musically  organized;"  and 
his_  discourse  on  "Religious  Music," 
which  was  delivered  before  this  Bee- 
thoven Society  at  the  opening  of  a 
new  organ — the  first  used  in  the  col- 
lege— is  a  discourse  which  should  be 
read  and  honored  in  every  school  of 
music,  as  its  author's  luminous  and 
inspiring  essay  upon  "Building  Eras 
in  Religion"  should  be  read  by  every 


student  and  teacher  of  architecture. 
As  we  turn  the  pages  of  his  volumes, 
we  note  that  it  was  before  various 
Yale  bodies  that  many  of  his  ad- 
dresses were  delivered ;  and  there 
were  addresses  there  delivered  which 
have  not  been  reprinted.  As  a  fre- 
quent preacher  in  the  college  chapel, 
he  was  a  perennial  influence  at  Yale ; 
and  as  we  write  the  word,  an  old  Yale 
student,  now  the  head  of  one  of  our 
great  educational  institutions,  enters 
our  room  to  tell  us  how  for  him,  as 
for  so  many  others,  those  sermons 
were  the  beginning  of  the  real  life  of 
thought. 

It  was  at  New  Haven,  before  the 
Sheffield  Scientific  School,  at  Com- 
mencement in  1870,  that  Bushnell  gave 
his  address  upon  "The  New  Educa- 
tion," which  is  one  of  the  warmest 
and  wisest  welcomes  of  the  new  scien- 
tific tendencies  in  our  schools  and 
universities  which  can  be  found  in  the 
books.  Like  every  word  of  Bush- 
nell's,  this  word  is  strong  and  satisfy- 
ing because  it  is  comprehensive  and 
proportionate.  Nowhere  are  the  de- 
fects of  the  old  academic  method 
more  frankly  pointed  out ;  nowhere 
are  the  usefulness  and  need  of  scien- 
tific training  more  enthusiastically 
emphasized.  So  far  from  sharing  the 
jealousies  of  the  new  scientific  move- 
ment in  education,  which  was  so  com- 
mon in  religious  circles  thirty  years 
ago,  Bushnell  took  "a  most  particular 
pleasure  in  the  advocacy  of  a  way  of 
education  specially  devoted  to  the  ap- 
plications of  science,  because  of  the 
conviction  I  feel  that  our  schools  of 
application  will  be  the  best  and  most 
certain  rectifiers  possible  of  the  unbe- 
lieving tendencies  of  science  itself." 
So  far  from  sharing  the  apprehension 
which  was  then  common  among 
academic  folk,  that  the  new  scientific 
enthusiasm  was  a  menace  to  literary 
and  humanistic  culture,  he  confidently 
prophesied  precisely  the  results  which 
have  followed.  Replying  to  the  gen- 
eral charge  that  in  his  criticism  of  the 
old  and  his  hospitality  to  the  new  he 
was  willing  to  take  down  the  honors 


HORACE  BUSHNELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


of    the    fuller    and    more    fertilizing 
courses,  he  exclaimed: 

"Far  from  it.  I  accept  no  such  construc- 
tion as  that.  I  can  think  of  it  only  as  ab- 
surd. No,  a  true  classic  culture  can  never 
be  antiquated;  and  if  I  seem  to  raise  a 
crusade  for  the  shorter  methods  of  applied 
science,  I  do  it  in  the  clear  understanding 
that  such  shorter  methods  are  wanted,  and 
that  I  am  doing  nothing  against,  but  every- 
thing for  the  advancement  of  the  old 
methods.  For  if  we  push  the  new  educa- 
tion to  its  utmost  efficiency  and  far  enough 
to  practically  fill  the  whole  tier  of  life  for 
which  it  is  organized,  making  every  walk 
of  industry  and  enterprise,  every  farm- 
house, factory,  mine,  trade,  road,  every 
shop  of  handicraft,  every  humblest  toil, 
even  down  to  the  knife-grinder's  lathe  and 
fisherman's  barrow,  to  feel  its  quickening 
touch  of  intelligence,  the  classic  culture 
will  only  be  as  much  more  largely  sought, 
and  its  courses  as  much  more  frequented, 
as  the  general  under-lift  of  mind  is  higher 
than  it  was  before." 


It  was  not,  however,  solely  nor  in- 
deed chiefly  to  the  university  that 
Bushnell  addressed  his  interest  and 
effort  as  an  educational  thinker.  We 
know  of  no  words  of  his  upon  the 
higher  education — and  we  think  of 
many  earnest  ones — so  earnest  or  so 
pregnant  as  those  upon  the  common 
school.  If  we  were  to  commend  one 
of  his  educational  addresses  above  all 
others  to  the  American  people  to- 
day, it  would  be  that  upon  "Common 
Schools."  He  insists  upon  the  fun- 
damental importance  of  the  common 
school  as  "a  great  American  mstitu- 
tion ;  one  that  has  its  "beginnings  with 
our  history  itself ;  one  that  is  insepara- 
bly joined  to  the  fortunes  of  the  re- 
public ;  and  one  that  can  never  wax 
old  or  be  discontinued  in  its  rights 
and  reasons  till  the  pillars  of  the  State 
are  themselves  cloven  down  forever." 
He  sees  clearly  the  inseparableness  of 
democracy  and  public  education.  He 
would  have  said,  as  we  said  last  month 
in  these  pages,  that  education  is  sim- 
ply another  way  of  spelling  de- 
mocracy. The  common  school,  he 
said,  "is  an  integral  part  of  the  civil 
order."     "An  application  against  com- 


mon schools  is  an  application  tor  the 
dismemberment  and  reorganization  of 
the  civil  order  of  the  State."  The  true 
schools  for  our  American  democracy, 
the  schools  which  alone  can  make  for 
the  perpetuity  and  integrity  of  a  really 
democratic  society  and  democratic 
institutions,  he  emphasizes  most 
strongly  and  with  impressive  detail, 
must  be  public  and  common,  "in  just 
the  same  sense  that  all  the  laws  are 
common ;  so  that  the  experience  of 
families  and  of  children  under  them 
shall  be  an  experience  of  the  great 
republican  rule  of  majorities ;  an  ex- 
ercise for  majorities  of  obedience  to 
fixed  statutes,  and  of  moderation  and 
impartial  respect  to  the  rights  and 
feelings  of  minorities ;  an  exercise  for 
minorities  of  patience  and  of  loyal 
assent  to  the  will  of  majorities ;  a 
schooling,  in  that  manner,  which  be- 
gins at  the  earliest  moment  possible, 
in  the  rules  of  American  law  and  the 
duties  of  an  American  citizen."  In  all 
the  discussions  of  the  parochial  school 
question  which  have  followed  in  the 
half  century,  few  really  important  prin- 
ciples have  been  laid  down  which  are 
not  clearly  outlined  in  this  address  by 
Bushnell.  in  1853.  He  points  out 
with  careful  kindness  what  the  ways 
and  places  are  for  toleration  and  for 
generous  hospitality ;  but  he  shows 
W'ith  a  firmness  and  common  sense 
equally  great  what  the  imperative^  of 
.1  republic  are  upon  all  citizens  alike, 
whatever  their  religion.  The  danger 
to  the  American  public  school  from 
religious  parochialism  of  any  kind  is 
perhaps  passing  by.  The  danger  from 
social  parochialisms  of  manv  kinds  is 
to-dav  greater;  and  Bushnell's  words 
upon  this  point  are  so  serious  and  im- 
portant that  we  quote  the  passacre  in 
its  entirety,  as  something  upon  which 
many  men  and  women  of  wealth  and 
high  social  position  in  our  American 
cities  should  solemnlv  ponder.  We 
do  not  remember  anv  word  upon 
this  subject  so  impressive  as  this,  save 
one.  the  word  of  Phillips  Brooks  in 
his  crreat  address  before  the  Boston 
Latin  School. 


10 


IJORACR   BUSHNELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


"This  great  institution  of  common 
schools  is  not  only  a  part  of  the  state,  but 
is  imperiously  wanted  as  such,  for  the  com- 
mon traininsT  of  so  many  classes  and  condi- 
tions of  people.  There  needs  to  be  some 
place  where,  in  early  childhood,  they  may 
be  brought  together  and  made  acquainted 
with  each  other;  thus  to  wear  away  the 
sense  of  distance,  otherwise  certain  to  be- 
come an  established  animosity  of  orders; 
to  form  friendships;  to  be  exercised  to- 
gether on  a  common  footing  of  ingenuous 
rivalry;  the  children  of  the  rich  to  feel  the 
power  and  do  honor  to  the  struggles  of 
merit  in  the  lowly,  when  it  rises  above 
them;  the  children  of  the  poor  to  learn  the 
force  of  merit  and  feel  the  benign  encour- 
agement yielded  by  its  blameless  victories. 
Indeed,  no  child  can  be  said  to  be  w^ell 
trained,  especiallv  no  male  child,  who  has 
not  met  the  people  as  thev  are,  above  him 
or  below,  in  the  seatings,  plays  and  studies 
of  the  common  school.  Without  this  he 
can  never  be  a  fully  qualified  citizen,  or 
prepared  to  act  his  part  wisely  as  a  citizen. 
Confined  to  a  select  school,  where  only  the 
children  of  wealth  and  distinction  are  gath- 
ered, he  will  not  know  the  merit  there  is  in 
the  real  virtues  of  the  poor,  or  the  power 
that  slumbers  in  their  talent.  He  will  take 
his  better  dress  as  a  token  of  his  better 
quality,  look  down  upon  the  children  of 
the  lowly  with  an  educated  contempt,  pre- 
pare to  take  on  lofty  airs  of  confidence  and 
presumption  afterward;  finally,  to  make  the 
discovery  when  it  is  too  late  that  poverty 
has  been  the  sturdy  nurse  of  talent  in  some 
unhonored  youth  who  comes  up  to  afifront 
him  by  an  equal,  or  mortify  and  crush  him 
by  an  overmastering,  force.  So  also  the 
children  of  the  poor  and  lowly,  if  they 
should  be  privately  educated  in  some  in- 
ferior degree  by  the  honest  and  faithful  ex- 
ertion of  their  parents,  secreted,  as  it  were, 
in  some  back  alley  or  obscure  corner  of  the 
town,  will  either  grow  uo  in  a  fierce,  in- 
bred hatred  of  the  wealthier  classes,  or  else 
in  a  mind  cowed  by  undue  modesty,  as  be- 
ing of  another  and  inferior  quality,  unable 
therefore  to  fight  the  great  battle  of  life 
hopefully,  and  counting  it  a  kind  of  pre- 
sumption to  think  that  they  can  force  their 
way  upward,  even  by  merit  itself.  With- 
out common  schools,  the  disadvantage  falls 
both  ways  in  about  equal  degrees,  and  the 
disadvantage  that  accrues  to  the  state,  in 
the  loss  of  so  much  cha-acter  and  so  many 
cross  ties  of  muttial  resnect  and  generous 
annrcciation.  ""e  embittering  so  fatally  of 
all  outward  distinctions,  and  the  propaga- 
tion of  so  many  misunderstandings, 
richfed  only  by  the  immense  public  mis- 
chiefs that  follow. — this,  I  say,  is  greater 
even  than  the  disadvantages  accruing  to 
the  classes  themselves;  a  disadvantage  that 
weakens  immensely  the  security  of  the  state 
and  even  of  its  liberties.     Indeed,   I  seri- 


ously doubt  whether  any  system  of  popu- 
lar government  can  stand  the  shock,  for 
any  length  of  time,  of  that  fierce  animosity 
that  is  certain  to  be  gendered  where  tlie 
cliildren  are  trained  up  wholly  in  their 
classes,  and  never  brought  together  to  feel, 
understand,  appreciate  and  respect  each 
other,  on  the  common  footing  of  merit  and 
of  native  talent,  in  a  common  school.  Fall- 
ing back  thus  on  the  test  of  merit  and  of 
native  force,  at  an  early  period  of  life,  mod- 
erates immensely  their  valuation  of  mere 
conventionalities  and  of  the  accidents  of 
fortune,  and  puts  them  in  a  way  of  defer- 
ence that  is  genuine  as  well  as  necessary  to 
their  common  peace  in  the  slate.  Com- 
mon schools  are  nurseries  thus  of  a  free 
republic;  private  schools,  of  factions, 
cabals,  agrarian  laws  and  contests  of  force. 
Therefore.  I  say,  we  must  have  common 
schools;  they  are  American,  indispensable 
to  our  American  institutions,  and  must  not 
be  yielded  for  any  consideration  smaller 
than  the  price  of  our  liberties." 


In  connection  with  the  subject  of 
Dr.  Bushnell's  interest  in  education, 
his  year  in  Cahfornia  constituted  one 
of  the  most  significant  chapters  of  his 
Hfe.  Here  he  appears  preeminently 
as  the  great  citizen  and  as  a  distinct 
and  shaping  force  in  American  educa- 
tion. This  Cahfornia  episode  re- 
ceives but  passing  mention  in  Dr. 
Munger's  book.  The  earher  biog- 
raphy devotes  a  chapter  to  it,  occu- 
pied almost  entirely  by  Bushnell's  let- 
ters describing  his  California  life ;  but 
the  great  purport  of  that  life  to  the 
new  Pacific  state  and  its  intellectual 
interests  has  no  adequate  statement. 
We  have  said  that  a  special  book  is 
needed  in  America  upon  "Horace 
Bushnell,  the.  Citizen."  We  com- 
mend to  some  bright  and  reverent 
historical  student  in  the  University  of 
California  the  preparation  of  a  special 
monograph  upon  "Horace  Bushnell 
in  California."  In  such  a  volume 
should  be  reprinted  the  three  Califor- 
nia addresses  which  have  not  been 
collected  in  any  of  the  volumes  of 
Bushnell's  works,  but  exist,  almost 
inaccessi1)le,  only  in  pamphlet  form: 
"Society  and  Religion:  a  Sermon  for 
California."  delivered  at  the  installa- 
tion of  the  pastor  of  the  First  Con- 


HORACE  BUSH  NELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


II 


gregational  Church  of  San  Francisco, 
in  1856,  a  sermon  which  may  be  com- 
pared, in  its  service  for  CaHfornia, 
with  John  Cotton's  "God's  Promise 
to  His  Plantation,"  in  its  service  for 
the  colony  of  Massachusetts  Bay ; 
the  appeal  for  an  endowment  for  the 
new  University  of  California,  issued 
by  Bushnell  in  1857;  and  the  article 
upon  "The  Characteristics  and  Pros- 
pects of  California,"  published  orig- 
inally in  the  Nczv  Englaudcr  and  then 
circulated  in  pamphlet  form  in  1858. 
We  know  of  no  other  description  of 
California  and  no  forecast  of  its  future 
in  that  early  day  so  interesting  or  so 
valuable  as  this.  It  ranks  with  Ma- 
nasseh  Cutler's  "Description  of  Ohio" 
in  1787.  Horace  Bushnell  v/as  in- 
deed California's  Manasseh  Cutler; 
and  like  Manasseh  Cutler  his  chief  in- 
terests for  the  new  world  with  whose 
opening  he  was  concerned  were  not 
material,  but  political,  religious  and 
educational.  His  effort  was  to  make 
California  know  at  the  beginning  that 
"more  to  her  than  gold  or  grain" 
should  be  "the  cunning  hand  and  cul- 
tured brain."  "The  doing  world  of 
California,"  he  said  in  his  appeal  for 
an  endowment  for  the  new  univer- 
sity, "will  be  right  when  there  is  a 
right  thinking  world  of  California 
prepared,  before  the  doing,  to  shape 
it."  "It  is  not,"  he  said,  "in  the  gold, 
nor  the  wheat,  nor  the  cattle  on  a 
thousand  hills,  that  California  is  to 
find,  after  all,  its  richest  wealth  and 
its  noblest  honors ;  but  it  is  in  the 
sons  she  trains  up  and  consecrates 
to  religion,  as  the  anointed  prophets 
and  preachers  of  God's  truth,  her 
great  orators  of  every  name  and  field, 
her  statesmen,  her  works  of  art  and 
genius,  the  voices  of  song  that  pour 
out  their  eternal  music  from  her 
hills.  Her  pride  is  not  that  wanting 
a  Shakespeare  or  a  Bacon  or  an  Ed- 
wards, she  sent  for  him  :  but  that  hav- 
ing begotten  and  made  him.  he  is 
hers.';  ' 

It  is  indeed  a  memorable  thing  that 
it  should  have  been  this  great  New 
England  Puritan  who  was  the  animat- 


ing spirit  in  so  high  degree  in  the 
founding  of  the  great  university 
which  looks  forth  through  the  Golden 
Gate ;  that  he  should  have  selected  its 
unrivalled  site  and  should  have  been 
invited  to  become  its  first  president. 
'Tf  I  can  get  a  university  on  its  feet, 
or  only  the  nest  ei>;^  laid,  before  I  re- 
turn," he  wrote  from  San  Francisco 
to  his  Hartford  friends,  just  before  he 
went  back  to  them,  "I  shall  not  have 
come  to  this  new  world  in  vain."  Of 
all  the  interesting  things  in  his  letters 
from  California,  there  are  none  so  in- 
teresting as  those  in  which  he  tells  of 
his  explorations  for  the  best  site  for 
the  university  and  discusses  the  con- 
siderations for  and  against  his  accept- 
ance of  the  presidency.  His  sense  of 
obligation  to  his  faithful  Hartford 
flock  was  the  motive  which  finally  de- 
termined him,  and  in  New  England, 
where  his  life  began,  it  ended ;  but 
surely  no  memory  should  be  held  in 
higher  honor  in  California  and  in  its 
university  than  that  of  Bushnell. 

When  the  trustees  of  the  new  uni- 
versity asked  themselves  by  what 
name  they  should  call  the  place  where 
it  was  to  be  seated,  their  president, 
Frederick  Billings,  from  Vermont, 
with  that  splendid  idealism  which 
often  marks  the  business  man,  said: 

Call  it  Berkeley.  A  century  ago  the 
ereat  Enstlish  philosopher  published  hi? 
famous  verses  upon  the  planting  of  the  arts 
and  sciences  in  America.  He  entertained 
hich  hopes  of  the  future  of  learnine  and 
culture  here.  So  deeply  did  he  feel  the 
importance  of  making  the  spiritualities  in- 
stead of  the  materialities  control  this  great 
new  world,  that  he  came  here  to  give  his 
own  life  to  the  work.  He  went  home 
thwarted  and  disappointed.  Let  us  here, 
on  the  shore  of  the  Pacific,  help  to  realize 
his  dream.  The  course  of  the  empire  of 
knowledge  can  take  its  way  no  farther  west- 
ward on  the  continent  than  this  place.  Let 
the  place  be  given  gratefully  and  reverently 
his  name. 

And  Berkeley  is  its  name.  In  the 
splendid  plans  for  the  rebuilding  and 
extension  of  the  great  university,  of 
which  just  now  we  hear  so  much, 
some  place  should  certainly  be  found, 


12 


HORACE  BUSH  NELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


and  that  a  central  and  impressive 
place,  for  a  statue  of  the  great  bishop ; 
and  beside  it  should  rise  a  statue  of 
Horace  Ikishncll.  They  would  be 
joined  fittingly,  not  only  because  of 
the  relation  of  their  names  and  influ- 
ences to  this  great  seat  of  Icarnnig, 
but  because  they  stand  alike  for  that 
public  spirit,  that  devotion  to  truth 
and  to  humanity,  and  that  high  ideal- 
ism, which  we  trust  will  ever  there  be 
native.  Could  the  mouths  of  both 
men  be  opened  there,  they  would 
unite  in  one  prophecy  and  one  prayer: 

"In  happy  climes,  the  seat  of  innocence, 
Where  nature  guides  and  virtue  rules; 

Where  men  shall  not  impose  for  truth  and 
sense 
The  pedantry  of  courts  and  schools; — 

"There  shall  be  sung  another  golden  age, 
The  rise  of  empire  and  of  arts, 

The  good  and  great  inspiring  epic  page, 
The  wisest  heads  and  noblest  hearts." 

If  the  thought  and  learning  of 
America  command  such  an  outlook 
through  the  Golden  Gate  upon  the 
great  new  life  and  new  duties  that 
confront  and  invite  the  republic  in  the 
Pacific  as  would  satisfy  the  eye  and 
conscience  of  Berkeley  and  of  Bush- 
nell,  then  indeed  will  that  life  be  se- 
cure and  true ;  then  will  the  nation  be 
safe  from  every  infidelity  and  every 
shame. 

In  selecting  the  site  and  planning 
the  grounds  for  a  new  university, 
Bushnell  was  exercising  one  of  his 
most  conspicuous  and  characteristic 
talents  and 'indulging  one  of  his  dear- 
est enthusiasms.  As  Dr.  Munger 
says,  "he  was  a  born  engineer,  always 
laying  out  roads  and  building  parks 
and  finding  the  best  paths  for  railways 
among  the  hills."  "It  is  characteris- 
tic of  him,"  says  Dr.  Munger  in  an- 
other place,  speaking  of  his  religious 
thought,  "that  all  his  leading  conten- 
tions had  their  genesis  early  in  his 
career  and  were  almost  never  absent 
from  his  thoughts."  What  was  true 
of  him  as  a  theologian  was  true  of 
him  as  an  engineer  and  landscape 
architect;  he  was  these  from  his  very 


boyhood.  His  daughter  writes:  "He 
saw  twice  as  much  as  most  people  do 
out  of  doors,  took  a  mental  sur- 
vey of  all  land  surfaces,  and  ke])t  m 
his  head  a  complete  map  of  the  phys- 
ical geography  of  every  place  with 
which  he  was  acquainted.  He  knew 
the  leaf  and  bark  of  every  tree  and 
shrub  that  grows  in  New  England; 
estimated  the  water  power  of  every 
stream  he  crossed ;  knew  where  all  the 
springs  were,  and  how  they  could  be 
made  available ;  engineered  roads  and 
railroads ;  laid  out,  in  imagination, 
parks,  cemeteries  and  private  places ; 
noted  the  laying  of  every  bit  of  stone 
wall."  Referring  to  his  own  boasted 
piece  of  stone  wall  at  the  old  home  in 
Litchfield  county,  as  firm  after  fifty 
years  as  when  he  laid  it,  she  remarks 
that  it  is  doubtful  whether  he  was 
ever  as  well  satisfied  with  any  of  his 
writings  as  he  was  with  that  stone 
wall.  Dr.  Bartol  writes:  "In  otir 
many  walks  in  Boston,  nothing  in 
streets  or  buildings.  Common  or  Pub- 
lic Garden,  but  was  caught  by  his  eye 
and  had  improvements  suggested 
from  his  thought ;"  and  Dr.  Gladden, 
writing  of  his  visit  to  North  Adams, 
says:  "He  was  up  early  in  the  sum- 
mer mornings  and  out  for  a  walk ; 
once  when  he  came  in  he  said,  'I  have 
found  the  place  for  your  park,'  and 
exhorted  me  to  go  to  work  at  once 
and  get  the  town  to  secure  the  site. 
It  was  indeed  the  very  place  for  a 
park,  and  if  the  thriving  city  of  North 
Adams  could  have  it  now,  it  would  be 
a  boon  to  her  people ;  but  my  faith 
was  not  strong  enough,  and  North 
Adams  lacks  its  Bushnell  Park."  His 
house  at  Hartford  was  built  from  his 
own  plans.  "In  selecting  the  lot  he 
provided  for  two  things,  a  garden  and 
an  open  view  of  the  country,  ending 
in  distant  hills.  Each  was  a  necessity 
to  him, — the  manifold  life  of  growing 
things  and  the  distant  horizon." 

This  engineering  enthusiasm  of  his 
had  large  scope  in  California.  In  the 
section  devoted  to  his  California  life. 
Dr.  Munger  says:  "The  variety  of  his 
studies  and  interests,  especially  in  en- 


HORACE   BUSHNELL,    THE   CITIZEN. 


13 


gineering  and  topography,  reminds 
one  of  Da  Vinci.  If  Bushnell  had  a 
passion  outside  of  theology,  it  was  for 
roads,  and  he  closely  connected  the 
two ;  the  new  country  afforded  him  a 
wide  field  for  each.  He  was  a  critic 
of  all  he  saw  with  the  eye,  and  a 
builder  in  imagination  of  such  as  were 
needed  or  were  possible.  He  foresaw 
a  railroad  across  the  continent — 
hardly  dreamed  of  as  yet — and,  hav- 
ing examined  all  possible  routes  of 
entrance  into  San  Francisco,  named 
the  one  that  was  finally  chosen."  In 
this  connection  there  is  a  passage  in 
his  remarkable  essay  upon  "City 
Plans"  which  should  be  rememl:)ered. 
After  showing  how  Sacramento 
and  Marysville,  which  are  actually 
set  below  high-water  mark,  could 
both  at  the  distance  of  hardly  a  mile 
have  secured  ample  high  ground, 
equally  convenient,  he  notices  the  re- 
markable combination  of  disadvan- 
tages in  San  Francisco  itself,  which 
might  all  have  been  avoided  by 
choosing  another  site. 

"There  was  just  over  the  bay,  a  few 
miles  to  the  north,  at  a  Httle  hamlet  called 
San  Pablo,  a  grand  natural  city  plat  about 
five  miles  square,  graded  handsomely 
down  to  the  bay.  supplied  on  its  upper 
edge  with  the  very  best  v,ater  breaking 
out  of  a  gorge  in  the  hills,  having  a 
straight  path  out  to  sea  for  ships,  among 
islands  of  rock  easily  defended,  and  a  fair 
open  sweep  for  railroad  connections, 
north,  east  and  south;  and  behind  the  rock 
summit  on  its  mid-front  a  natural  dock- 
ground  two  miles  long,  parti}'  covered  by 
the  tides  even  now,  and  open  to  the  deep 
water  at  both  ends.  In  short,  there  was 
never  in  the  world  such  a  site  for  a  mag- 
nificent commercial  city;  but,  alas,  the 
city  is  fixed  elsewhere  by  the  mere  chance 
landing  of  adventure,  and  a  change  is  for- 
ever impossible!  What  an  illustration  of 
the  immense  or  even  literallv  unspeakable 
importance  of  the  results  that  are  some- 
times pending  on  the  right  location  of  a 
city!" 

It  is  a  fair  thing  for  San  Francisco 
to  consider,  even  at  this  late  day,  in 
view  of  the  fact  that  she  is  likely  to 
become  one  of  the  great  cities  of  the 
world,  whether  it  would  not  be  profit- 
able for  her  now  boldly  to  act  upon 


Ijushnell's  wisdom,  and  prove  that  to 
men  of  adequate  vision  and  adequate 
energy  no  change  which  is  commend- 
able is  too  great  to  be  impossible. 


It  was  just  before  his  visit  to  Cali- 
fornia that  Bushnell  threw  himself 
into  the  work  of  securing  a  public 
park  in  his  own  city  of  Hartford. 
This  park,  which  bears  his  name,  was, 
as  we  have  shown,  the  fruit  of  a  hie- 
long  passion.  He  early  noticed,  in 
the  very  centre  of  the  city,  a  great 
tract  that  had  never  been  put  to  use 
and  was  really  a. deformity ;  and  after 
years  of  effort  he  carried  ut  his  plan 
of  transforming  this  into  the  beauti- 
ful Hartford  park  which  we  know, 
crowned  by  the  State  Capitol.  The 
action  of  the  city  government,  recog- 
nizing that  this  pubhc  park  was  due 
to  his  foresight  and  persistence  and 
naming  it  by  his  name,  was  an- 
nounced to  him  on  his  last  day  of 
conscious  life.  Speaking  of  this  park, 
upon  whose  border  stands  Bushnell's 
own  church.  Dr.  Parker,  his  fellow 
Hartford  minister,  has  well  written: 
"The  entire  scene,  one  of  the  fairest 
in  our  land, — the  park,  the  church, 
the  capitol, — is  Dr.  Bushnell's  lasting 
memorial.  Si  qtiaeris  monv.meiitmn, 
circimispice."  Rev.  Joseph  Twichell, 
another  Hartford  friend  and  com- 
panion, has  said  that  "Bushnell  lies 
back  of  all  that  is  best  in  the  city. 
He  quickened  the  men  who  have 
made  Hartford  what  it  is."  i\nd  yet 
another,  Rev.  N.  H.  Egleston,  writes: 

"What  interest  of  Hartford  is  not  to- 
day indebted  to  him?  Do  we  speak  of 
schools?  The  fathers  of  those  who  are 
now  enjoying  our  unsurpassed  appliances 
for  education  know  well  that  the  city  is 
indebted  to  no  one  more  than  to  Dr. 
Bushnell  for  the  new  impulse  which  lifted 
its  schools  to  their  present  grade  of  ex- 
cellence. Do  we  speak  of  taste  and  cul- 
ture? Who  has  been  a  nobler  example 
and  illustration  of  both,  or  who  has  by 
his  just  criticism  and  various  instructions 
so  aided  in  their  development?  If  we  turn 
10  the  business  interests  of  the  city,  who 
of  its  older  residents  does  not  remember 
how,  years  ago.  at  a  time  when  the  im- 
pression had  become  prevalent  that  Hart- 


N 


HORACE  DUSHNELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


ford  had  reached  its  growth,  that  it  was 
declining,  wliilc  other  cities  were  outstrip- 
ping it,  Dr.  Bushnell  lifted  himself  up  in 
that  crisis  and  asserted  not  only  the  abil- 
ity- but  the  dut}'  of  the  city  to  prosper,  and 
how  he  woke  the  city  to  new  life,  and 
gave  an  iniDulse  which  has  been  felt  to 
this  day?  Hartford  feels  him  to-day 
everywhere.  It  may  be  doubted  whether 
another  instance  in  our  own  history  is  to 
be  found  of  a  man  impressing  himself  in 
so  many  ways  and  with  sucii  force  upon  a 
place  of  such  size  and  importance  as  this. 
Hartford  is  largely  what  he  has  made  it." 

The  reference  to  Bushneirs  word 
in  Hartford's  business  crisis  is  to 
his  sermon,  "Prosperity  our  Duty," 
preached  in  1847,  a  sermon  not  in- 
cluded, we  think,  in  any  of  Bushnell's 
volumes,  but  which  shall  be  included 
in  the  monog-raph  upon  "Horace 
Bushnell  and  Hartford,"  which  some 
young  Hartford  scholar  will  some 
day,  we  trust,  place  in  the  library.  In 
that  volume  will  also  be  reprinted 
Bushnell's  "History  of  the  Hartford 
Park,"  published  in  1869  in  Hearth 
and  Home. 

Alost  comprehensive  and  most  val- 
uable of  Bushnell's  writings  as  an  en- 
gineer is  the  essay,  "City  Plans,"  pre- 
pared for  the  Public  'improvement 
Society  of  Hartford,  but  for  reasons 
of  health  never  delivered.  In  our 
own  time  there  are  manv  men  alive 
to  the  great  question  of  public  beauty, 
to  the  idea  of  a  city  as  a  unit  and  a 
true  work  of  art,  to  the  principles  of 
a  good  city  plan,  the  utilizing  of  his- 
torical association,  the  conditions  of 
health,  the  requisites  to  fine  effect; 
but  when  Bushnell  wrote  his  essay 
upon  "City  Plans,"  there  were  few 
such  men.  In  this  field,  as  in  so 
many  others,  Bushnell  was  a  prophet. 

"There  is  wanted  in  this  field,"  he  wrote, 
•'a  new  profession,  specially  prepared  by 
studies  that  belong  to  the  special  subject 
matter.  If  a  city  as  a  mere  property  con- 
cern is  to  involve  amounts  of  capital 
greater  than  a  dozen  or  even  a  hundred 
railroads,  why,  as  a  mere  question  of  inter- 
est, should  it  be  left  to  the  misbegotten 
planning  of  some  operator  totally  disquali- 
fied? We  want  a  city-planning  profession, 
as  truly  as  an  architectural,  house-planning 
profession.     Every  new  village,  town.  city. 


ought  to  be  contrived  as  a  work  of  art,  and 
prepared  for  the  new  age  of  ornament  to 
come." 

Of  interest  as  an  illustration  of  this 
engineering  eye  of  his,  as  well  as  of 
his  sense  of  the  new  life  dawning  for 
the  world  through  the  wonderful  new 
opportunities  of  travel  and  communi- 
cation,  is   his   striking  address   upon 
"The  Day  of  Roads ;"  and  not  remote 
in  its  interest  is  that  great  essay  on 
"Building   Eras   in    Religion,"   which 
gives  its.nanie  to  one  of  his  volumes. 
Few  of  his  essays  have  greater  sweep 
than  this,  or  illustrate  more  impres- 
sively his  aesthetic  mind  and  his  con- 
structive imagination.     His  interpre- 
tation of  the  spirit  which  reared  the 
Jewish  Temple  and  the  spirit  of  the 
cathedral  age  is  full  of  fine  insight ; 
but  more  stimulating  is  his  forward 
glance  to  the  building  era  which  will 
come  when  the  intellectual  synthesis 
to  which  the  world  is  now  advancing 
is  complete.    The  moral  and  spiritual 
reg;eneration  of  the  world  which   he 
foresees  "is  going  to  require  a  great 
building  age   for   its   uses ;"   and   he 
even    ventures    upon    a    program    in 
large   outline   of  this   architecture   of 
the  new  dispensation.     "I  know  not 
anything  that  will  fire  us  with  higher 
thoughts  and  tone  our  energies  for  a 
loftier  key  than  to  see  just  wliat  our 
prophets  saw  with  so  great  triumph, 
glorious    ages    of   building    for    God, 
such  as  never  were  beheld  before ;  a 
city  of  God,  or  it  may  be  many,  com- 
plete in  all  grandeur  and  beauty,  and 
representing  fitly  the  great  ideas  and 
glorious   populations   and   high   crea- 
tive powers  of  a  universal   Christian 
age."     It  is  an  essay  for  the  Ameri- 
can architect  as  well  as  for  the  reli- 
gious man  to  study.    What  might  we 
not  hope,  could  we  have  an  architec- 
tural  genius   fertilized   by   Bushnell's 
religious  vision  in  as  high  degree  as 
Bushnell's    religious    mind    was    en- 
riched by  his  architectural  taste  and 
talent! 

* 

*     * 

The  volume  entitled  "Moral  Uses 


HORACE   BUSH  NELL,    THE   CITIZEX 


15 


of  Dark  Things"  contains  two  essays, 
that  upon  "Bad  Government"  and 
that  upon  "The  Conditions  of  Soli- 
darity," which  must  not  be  neglected 
by  the  student  of  Bushnell  as  a  citi- 
zen, the  latter  being  a  noteworthy 
consideration  of  the  organic  nature  of 
human  society,  upon  which  the  whole 
tendency  of  thought  since  Bushnell's 
time  has  led  us  to  lay  even  greater  em- 
phasis. In  the  volume  of  "Sermons 
on  Living  Subjects"  is  a  noble  sermon 
on  "How  to  be  a  Christian  in  Trade," 
which  touches  many  vital  considera- 
tions in  our  present  business  and  social 
life.  But  for  the  most  part  the 
writings  which  represent  Bushnell 
the  citizen  are  collected  in  the  two  vol- 
umes, "Building  Eras  in  Religion" 
and  "Work  and  Play."  These  vol- 
um^es  should  lie  upon  the  table  in 
every  American  home.  They  should 
have  place  especially  in  the  library  of 
every  young  American  student  wdio 
is  about  to  go  out  as  an  influence  in 
our  political  and  intellectual  life, 
charged  with  the  duty  of  keeping  the 
republic  true  to  the  great  ideals  of  its 
founders  and  to  the  moral  imperative 
listened  to  so  reverently  and  pro- 
claimed with  such  power  by  the  au- 
thor of  these  pulsating  pages.  Few 
men  in  Am.erica  have  insisted  more 
strenuously  upon  lifting  political 
questions  out  of  the  region  of  tem- 
porary expediency  into  that  of  mor- 
als. The  conflict  with  slavery  gave 
him  occasion  enough  to  emphasize 
this  principle.  His  article  in  the 
Christian  Frecvian  in  1844,  an  answer 
to  Dr.  Taylor,  not  repubHshed  in  his 
volumes,  is  a  noble  expression  of  it. 
"He  taught  the  people  that  the  only 
way  to  secure  the  greatest  good  was 
along  the  path  of  absolute  righteous- 
ness and  not  in  vain  attempts  to 
measure  consequences.  Dr.  Taylor 
maintained  that  consequences  created 
duty,  a  principle  that  determined  po- 
litical action  in  the  country  for  twenty 
years.  Bushnell  contended  that  right- 
eousness secures  the  only  conse- 
quence worth  having.  It  was  this 
principle     that     carried     the     nation 


through  the  war  and  brought  slavery 
to  an  end." 

The  Congregational  Library  in  Bos- 
ton is  very  rich  in  Bushnell  material. 
It  has  in  its  collection  many  sermons 
and  addresses  which  do  not  appear  in 
Bushnell's  collected  works.  Among 
them  we  have  found  a  sermon 
preached  in  1844,  upon  "Politics 
under  the  Law  of  God."  It  will  be 
noted  that  this  is  the  same  year  as  that 
of  the  article  in  the  Christian  Freeman 
to  which  Mr.  Munger  refers.  In  the 
preface  to  this  public  discourse  Bush- 
nell says  that  it  is  offered  to  the  pub- 
lic "because  it  has  been  so  unfortunate 
as  to  be  denounced  for  qualities  posi- 
tively mischievous  and  dishonorable 
to  a  minister."  "My  ideal  in  the  dis- 
course," he  says,  "was  to  make  a  bold 
push  for  principle  as  the  test  of  public 
men  and  measures,  and  let  the  lines 
when  drawn  cut  where  they  would.  I 
think  I  saw  clearly  that,  if  we  are  ever 
to  have  any  principle  in  politics,  it 
m.ust  be  enforced  when  there  is  a  ques- 
tion on  hand  and  results  of  conse- 
quence are  to  be  eiTected."  The  dis- 
course itself  is  the  expression  of  a 
spirit  which  America  in  this  time  has 
sadly  needed  to  find  in  all  her  pulpits, 
but  has  found  in  too  few.  Before 
coming  directly  to  the  slavery  ques- 
tion he  surveys  the  various  evils  in  the 
nation  at  the  time,  which  it  was  the 
duty  of  men  who  stood  for  morality  in 
politics  to  denounce. 

'"In  the  great  Missouri  question,  on 
which  the  personal  freedom,  character  and 
happiness  of  so  many  famiUes  of  human 
beings,  the  honor  and  security  of  our  lib- 
erties and  the  moral  well-being  of  a  ?j:reat 
section  of  our  territory  were  pending, 
what  were  the  considerations  that  weighed 
in  the  deliberation  and  determined  the 
final  vote?  Was  it  the  immutable  princi- 
ples of  justice  and  humanity,  those  prin- 
ciples which  God  asserts  and  will  forever 
vindicate?  No,  it  was  the  balance  of 
power  between  the  slave-holdinsr  and  non- 
slave-holding  states."  '"In  the  Indian 
question,  what  did  we  do  but  lend  the 
power  of  the  civil  arm  to  crush  a  defence- 
less people  and  their  rights?  We  violated 
our  most  solemn  treaties  and  pledges.  If 
there  was  a  just  God  in  heaven,  he  could 
not  be  with  us.     It  was  policy — a  compo- 


i6 


UORACIl   BUS/I.MiLL,    THE   CITIZEN. 


sitioii  with  fraud  and  wickedness.  An 
honored  chieftain  at  the  head  of  the  nation 
recommended  the  measure,  tlie  nation  de- 
creed it,  and  the  military  enacted  it  with 
their  bayonets!"  "The  Florida  war  was  a 
transaction  rooted  in  unmitigated  iniquity 
and  oppression."  At  the  close  of  his  sur- 
vey, which  covers  other  points,  he  de- 
clares: "We  are  guilty  as  a  nation  of  the 
most  daring  wrongs,  and  if  there  be  a  just 
God  \vc  have  reason  to  tremble  for  his 
judgments.  We  arc  ceasing  as  a  nation 
to  have  any  conscience  about  public  mat- 
ters. Good  men  and  Christians  are  suffer- 
ing an  allegiance  to  party  rule,  which  de- 
molishes their  personality,  learning  quietly 
to  approve  and  passively  to  follow  in  what- 
ever path  their  party  leads."  He  considers 
some  of  the  causes  which  operated  to  pro- 
duce this  result;  and  declares  among  other 
things  that  the  neglect  of  the  pulpit  to  as- 
sert the  dominion  of  moral  principles  over 
what  we  do  as  citizens  has  hastened  and 
aggravated  , the  evil — and  adds:  "It  is  the 
solemn  duty  of  the  ministers  of  religion 
to  make  their  people  feel  the  presence  of 
God's  law  everywhere,  and  especially 
where,  the  dearest  interests  of  life,  the  in- 
terests of  virtue  and  religion,  are  them- 
selves at  stake.  This  is  the  manner  of  the 
Bible.  There  is  no  one  subject  on  which 
it  is  more  full  than  it  is  in  reference  to  the 
moral  duties  of  rulers  and  citizens."  Fol- 
lowing his  survey  of  causes,  he  speaks  of 
consequences;  and  after  noticing  two  or 
three  of  these  observes:  "Take  away  con- 
science, let  party  strife  and  discipline  clear 
off  the  constraint  of  principle,  and  your 
constitutions  have  no  value  and  no 
avenger;  your  civil  order  is  shivered  to 
fragments.  Nor  is  it  possible  that  public 
life  or  any  warm  sentiment  of  patriotism 
should  survive  the  destruction  of  moral 
and  religious  influences  in  the  state.  Who 
will  love  his  country  when  liis  country 
ceases  from  equity  and  protection?  The 
divorce  of  politics  from  conscience  and 
religion  must  infallibly  end  in  the  total 
wreck  of  our  institutions  and  liberties." 
He  then  asks  what  shall  be  done,  and 
answers:  "First  of  all,  we  must  open  our 
eyes  to  what  we  have  done.  We  must  see  . 
our  sin  as  a  people  and  repent  of  it."  And 
again,  "Require  it  of  your  rulers  to  cease 
from  the  prostitution  of  their  office  to 
effect  the  reign  of  their  party.  Require 
them  to  say  what  is  true,  and  do  what  is 
right;^^and  the  moment  they  falter,  forsake 
them."  The  sermon,  which  is  one  of  the 
most  impassioned  which  Bushnell  ever 
preached,  ends  with  a  scathing  denuncia- 
tion of  slavery,  which  was  then  the  great 
source  of  our  political  corruption  and  infi- 
delity: "Slavery  is  the  great  curse  of  this 
nation.  I  blush  to  think  how  tamely  we 
have  suffered  its  encroachments.  The 
time    has    come    to    renounce    our    pusilla- 


nimity. We  have  made  a  farce  of  American 
liberty  long  enough.  God's  frown  is  upon 
us,  and  the  scorn  of  the  world  is  settling 
on  our  name  in  the  earth.  God  I  know  is 
gracious,  and  how  much  he  will  bear  I 
cannot  tell.  He  is  also  just,  and  how  long 
his  justice  can  suffer  is  past  human  fore- 
sight. Our  politics  are  now  our  greatest 
immorality,  and  what  is  most  of  all  fear- 
ful, the  immorality  sweeps  through  the 
Church  of  God." 

Eiishnell's  first  ptibli*^  sermon, 
"The  Crisis  of  the  Church,"  was  occa- 
sioned by  the  mol:)bin,c^  of  Garrison  in 
the  streets  of  Boston  in  1835.  This 
was  a  time  when  in  many  pulpits  the 
subject  of  slavery  was  a  tabooed  sub- 
ject, and  churches  were  divided  upon 
it.  But  Bushnell,  as  Dr.  Munger 
says,  "held  to  the  Puritan  conception 
of  the  state  as  moral,  and  did  not 
hesitate  to  use  his  pulpit  to  enforce 
this  conception  and  to  denounce  any 
departure  from  it.  The  antislavery 
niovement  was  -so  distinctly  Christian 
that  he  would  not  keep  it  out  of  his 
pulpit,  even  if  his  sermons  were  re- 
garded and  used  as  campaign  docu- 
ments." Of  the  fugitive  slave  law  he 
prayed  that  God  would  grant  him 
grace  never  to  "do  the  damning  sin" 
of  obedience  to  it.  "The  first  duty 
that  I  owe  to  civil  government,"  he 
said,  "is  to  violate  and  spurn  such  a 
law."  Of  the  spoils  system  he  spoke 
in  a  notable  sermon  on  "American 
Politics,"  in  1840,  as  the  civil  service 
reformicr  speaks  to-day.  "In  all  mat- 
ters pertaining  to  our  national  wel- 
fare," wrote  his  daughter,  "his  pa- 
triotism w'as  ever  on  the  alert."  His 
constant  refuge  was  in  the  Puritan 
spirit  and  in  the  companionshi]-)  of 
the  founders  of  New  England  and  of 
the  republic.  Few  addresses  have 
been  given  upon  the  Pilgrim  Fathers 
worthier  or  weightier  than  his  "The 
Founders  Great  in  their  Uncon- 
sciousness," before  the  New  England 
Society  of  New  York  on  Forefathers 
Day;  1849,  j^'ist  fifty  years  ago.  "The 
way  of  greatness  is  the  way  of  duty," 
— to  learn  this  principle  from  them 
and  take  it  to  our  hearts,  this,  he  said, 
is  the  most  fitting  monument  we  can 


HORACE  BUSHNELL,    r.^E/ririifiiV;  :'**:%:  j/\       17 


erect  to  the  fathers.  His  profound 
address  on  "Popular  Government  by 
Divine  Right,"  deUvered  as  a  sermon 
on  the  day  of  the  national  thanksgiv- 
ing in  1864,  in  the  very  midst  of  the 
civil  war,  is  a  luminous  study  of  the 
development  of  our  nationality  and, 
still  more  important,  a  searching  crit- 
icism of  the  dictum  that  the  "consent 
of  the  governed"  is  the  real  and  suffi- 
cient basis  of  just  government.  Ul- 
timate and  true  sovereignty  resides 
not  in  any  majority  of  men,  but  in  the 
law  of  God,  which  nations,  through 
whatever  painful  processes,  must  dis- 
cover and  conform  to.  Political  in- 
quiry becomes  a  search  for  right,  for 
moral  relations ;  and  in  closing  his 
essay,  Bushnell  says  these  remark- 
able words, — speaking  of  govern- 
ment, of  course,  in  its  limiting  and 
controlling,  and  not  in  its  construc- 
tive and  cooperative  aspects:  "There 
will  be  less  and  less  need  of  govern- 
ment, because  the  moral  right  of  what 
we  have  is  felt ;  and  as  what  we  do  as 
right  is  always  free,  we  shall  grow 
more  free  as  the  centuries  pass,  till 
perhaps  even  government  itself  may 
lapse  in  the  freedom  of  a  righteous- 
ness consummated  in  God." 


The  next  year  Bushnell  was  the 
orator  at  the  commemoration  by  Yale 
College  of  her  alumni  who  had  fallen 
in  the  war,  giving  his  great  oration, 
"Our  Obligations  to  the  Dead."  We 
have  spoken  of  "The  Age  of  Home- 
spun" as  the  prose  counterpart  of 
Burns's  "Cotter's  Saturday  Night." 
The  oration  on  "Our  Obligations  to 
the  Dead"  is  the  prose  counterpart 
of  Lowell's  "Commemoration  Ode," 
which  was  read  at  Harvard  just  five 
days  before,  in  that  midsummer  of 
1865.  It  would  be  useful  to  compare 
the  oration  and  the  poem  and  see  how 
many  of  the  same  great  thoughts 
were  developed  independently,  in  the 
different  ways.  This  wc^  of  the  ora- 
tor is  of  interest  in  remembrance  of 
the  poet's  word  on  Lincoln:  "Tn  the 
place  of  politicians  we  are  going  to 


have  at  least  some  statesmen ;  for  we 
have  gotten  the  pitch  of  a  grand  new 
Abrahamic  statesmanship,  unsophis- 
ticated, honest  and  real, — no  cringing 
sycophancy  or  cunning  art  of  dema- 
gogy." Of  interest  in  this  connec- 
tion, too,  is  Bushnell's  application  in 
another  essay,  that  on  "The  True 
Wealth  of  Nations,"  of  the  term  "the 
first  American"  to  one  daring  to  re- 
"  nounce  a  state  of  cHency  upon 
Europe  and  stand  upon  his  own  na- 
tional feet.  This  word  of  Bushnell's 
antedates  Lowell's  ode  by  thirty 
years.  An  echo,  or  an  anticipation — 
we  do  not  remember  which — of  a 
striking  word  in  Lowell's  Lessing  es- 
say is  this  word  of  Bushnell's  in  his 
Commemoration  address:  "Great  ac- 
tion is  the  highest  kind  of  writing, 
and  he  that  makes  a  noble  character 
writes  the  finest  kind  of  book."  It 
woud  be  inspiring  to  quote  many  of 
the  eloquent  passages  from  this  great 
address ;  we  shall  instead  quote  one 
practical  suggestion,  the  deliverance 
of  a  far-seeing  statesmanship,  which, 
could  it  have  been  acted  on,  would 
have  saved  the  nation  how  much 
trouble  and  have  been  the  source  of 
how  great  order  and  strength  to-day: 

"Do  simply  this,  which  we  have  a  per- 
fect constitutional  right  to  do. — pass  this 
very  simple  amendment,  that  the  basis  of 
representation  in  Congress  shall  hereafter 
be  the  number,  in  all  the  states  alike,  of  the 
free  male  voters  therein.  Then  the  work 
is  done;  a  general  free  suffra<re  follows  by 
consent,  and  as  soon  as  it  probably  ought. 
For  these  returning  states  will  not  be  long 
content  with  half  the  offices  they  want  and 
half  the  power  allowed  them  in  the  repub- 
lic. Negro  suffrage  is  thus  carried  with- 
out even  naming  the  word." 


Bushnell's  address  upon  "The  True 
Wealth  or  Weal  of  Nations"  was 
given  in  1837,  eight  years  before 
Charles  Sumner's  great  oration  on 
"The  True  Grandeur  of  Nations." 
The  latter  address  was  a  war  upon 
militarism  ;  the  former  was  chiefly  a 
war  upon  mammonism.  It  was  an 
efTort  to  arouse  America  to  an  under- 
standing of  how  much  more  man  is 


7<^ 


HORACE 'BVSHNELL,    THE  CITIZEN. 


than  money.  JJushncll  already  saw  the 
broad  and  hostile  distinc.ions  begin- 
ning to  display  themselves  in  New 
England,  "sad  omens,  which  leave  us 
no  time  to  squander  in  merely  eco- 
nomical policies."  He  arraigned  the 
great  wastes  of  our  life.  "It  can  be 
shown  from  unquestionable  data  that 
fashionable  extravagance  in  our  peo- 
ple such  as  really  transcends  their 
means  to  a  degree  that  is  not  respect- 
able, theatrical  amusements  known  to 
be  only  corrupt  and  vulgar  in  charac- 
ter, together  with  intemperate  drink- 
ing and  all  the  idleness,  crmie  and 
pauperism  consequent,  have  anni- 
hilated since  we  began  our  history 
not  less  than  three  or  four  times  the 
total  wealth  of  the  nation."  Else- 
where he  dwells  upon  the  immense 
social  improvement  which  will  come, 
especially  in  the  condition  of  the  la- 
boring classes,  when  the  enormous 
expenditures  of  war  and  vice  are  dis- 
continued, and  our  substance  and 
forces  are  properly  utilized.  He  ar- 
raigned the  disproportion  in  men's 
expenditures.  "I  found  that  a  man 
who  would  give  a  cheap  sort  of  law- 
yer from  ten  to  twenty  dollars  for  a 
few  hours'  service  is  giving  the  pro- 
fessor of  education  from  one  to  tv/o 
dollars  for  a  whole  winter's  work  on 
the  mind  of  his  son."  He  closed  with 
a  great  plea  for  a  true  education,  for 
devotion  to  "the  noble  purpose  of 
making  our  whole  people,  since  they 
are  called  to  rule,  fit  to  rule." 


But  the  words  which  we  would 
leave  in  the  minds  of  our  reader^,  as 
we  take  leave  here  of  this  great  citi- 
zen, are  those  of  his  prophetic  ora- 
tion upon  "The  Growth  of  Law."  It 
is,  in  the  first  place,  a  survey  of  his- 
tory, to  trace  the  development  of  law, 
to  show  what  Greece  did  for  the 
world  and  what  Rome  did ;  but  the 
most  significant  pages  of  the  essay 
are  those  in  which  he  looks  forward 
to   the   triumph   of   the   true   interna- 


tional spirit,  and  sees  the  end  of  wars 
in  a  rational  and  organized  world. 
His  tribute  to  Hugo  Grotius,  the  first 
great  international  man,  is  one  of  the 
most  eloquent  passages  in  all  his 
works.  Summing  up  the  achieve- 
ments already  of  international  law,  he 
adds : 


"A  day  will  come  when  the  dominion 
of  ignorance  and  physical  force,  when  dis- 
tinctions of  blood  and  the  accidents  of 
fortune  will  cease  to  rule  the  world. 
Beauty,  reason,  science,  personal  worth 
and  religion  will  come  into  their  rightful 
supremacy,  and  moral  forces  will  preside 
over  physical  as  mind  over  the  body.  Lib- 
erty and  equality  will  be  so  far  established 
that  every  man  wjjl  have  a  right  to  his  ex- 
istence and,  if  he  can  make  it  so,  to  an  hon- 
orable, powerful  and  happy  existence. 
Policy  will  cease  to  be  the  same  as  cun- 
ning, and  become  a  study  of  equity  and 
reason.  It  is  impossible  that  wars  should 
not  be  discontinued,,ii  not  b}'  the  progress 
of  the  international  code,  as  we  have 
hinted,  yet  by  the  progress  of  liberty  and 
intelligence;  for  the  masses  who  have 
hitherto  composed  the  soldiery  must  some- 
time discover  the  folly  of  dying,  as  an  ig- 
noble herd,  to  serve  the  passions  of  a  few 
reckless  politicians,  or  to  give  a  name  for 
prowess  to  leaders  whose  bravery  consists 
in  marching  tlieiii  into  danger.  The  arbi- 
trament of  arms  is  not  a  whit  less  absurd 
than  the  old  English  trial  by  battle,  and 
before  the  world  has  done  rolling  they  will 
both  be  classed  together." 

"Who  she'.l  think  it  incredible  that  this 
same  progress  of  moral  legislation,  which 
has  gone  thus  far  in  the  international 
code,  may  ultimately  be  so  far  extended  as 
to  systematize  and  establish  rules  of  arbi- 
trament, by  which  all  national  disputes 
shall  be  definitely  settled,  without  an  appeal 
to  arms!  And  so  it  shall  result  that,  as 
the  moral  code  is  one.  all  law  shall  come 
into  unity,  and  a  kind  of  virtual  oneness 
embrace  all  nations.  We  shall  flow  to- 
g  ther  in  the  annihilation  of  distances  and 
become  brothers   in   the  terms  of  justice." 

True  citizen  of  the  little  Litchfield 
county  town,  true  citizen  of  Con- 
necticut, true  citizen  of  America,  true 
citizen  of  the  world,  true  citizen,  in 
each  and  all  of  these  earthly  circles, 
of  the  divine  commonwealth,  the  king- 
dom of  God^such  was  Horace  Bush- 
nell. 


C03aSD0b5D 

?!S     ^^"9^H'■^TlpN  DEPARTMENT 
'O^"*-      202  Mom  Library 


"^'^OoiAT^r., 


FORM  NO.  00..  40.,  3/^8"'%;°^^vr?„^7-.  B^^<^^EV 


BERKELEY,  CA  94720 


N0V27  195G 


®s 


